Reference Material

Disclaimer, Copyright

The U.S.S. Mariner is in no way affiliated with, condoned or given any notice by the Seattle Mariners baseball team, who have their own website. Similarly, we have no association with the ownership group or any businesses related to the Mariners. All article text is written by the authors, all pictures are taken by the authors, who retain copyright to their works. No copying or reproduction of any content here, photographic or otherwise, is authorized. Please email us if you wish to reproduce our work.

Posting will be a little bit sparse the next few days as I travel westward. I’ll be on a plane most of the day tomorrow, then spending time with friends and family when not hosting the USSM event on Saturday at Safeco. Hopefully I’ll see a bunch of you this weekend. Posting will resume a more normal schedule next week.

Since the team isn’t giving us that many interesting things to post about, I figured I’ll try something here that’s been a pretty big success over at FanGraphs – the live chat. From 11 to 12 pm today, swing by for an hour of Mariner talk. Should be more fun than last night’s game, at least.

Things are winding down for the year. The summer leagues are both done, the Arizona League played its final game on Sunday, Pulaski will finish up the regular season on Tuesday and presumably head to the playoffs after that, and what’s more, this will represent your last chance to go to Cheney Stadium before the renovations hit. Let’s get to it then…

Writes Szymborski: “The Mariners have scored 3.29 runs per game. The last American League team to score fewer runs per game was the 1981 Toronto Blue Jays, who averaged 3.10 at a time when an average team scored only 4.07 runs per game. That number is 4.42 this year.”

It’s very likely you know this — or at least suspected something like this. Sorry about that.

But in a shocking turn of events, Seattle’s incompetence actually turns out to be good news. “How?” you ask. Through the wonder of nerdom!

Szymborski again:

So, by how much have the team’s bats underperformed expectations? And how does this compare historically?

To answer this question, I used the historical Marcel projection database that sabermetrician Jeff Sackmann recently created. Marcel is a simple projection system originally created by Tom Tango based on a player’s most recent three seasons, age and regression to the mean. Using this database, I went through every team’s offense from the past 40 years to see how the actual offenses compared to their expectations, taking into consideration league offenses, mix of players and actual playing time received. The “performance ratio” is simply the ratio between runs expected before the season and the actual runs scored.

After this, Szymborski provides a list of the 10 most underperforming teams. The worst “performance ratio,” as he calls it, belongs to the 1978 Oakland A’s. That team scored only 71% of the runs that Marcel would’ve projected. This year’s Seattle Mariners are fourth on the list, with a performance ratio of 73%.

And here’s probably the best news for the M’s and their fans: the teams on this top-10 list averaged a 0.6 run/game improvement and a nine-win improvement a season later.

This information probably comes as some relief to Seattleites, who can now view the glass not as mostly empty, but definitely like a quarter, or even three-eighths, full.

What if we applied this new-found optimism to the rest of the season? What would that look like?

Here are five cases wherein rejoicing might be possible:

Mostly Empty: An elderly Ken Griffey Jr is given over 100 plate appearances and posts -0.8 WAR.Three-Eighths Full: Every last Seattle-area resident — including moms and their newborns — have more productive major league season than a future Hall-of-Famer!

Mostly Empty: Manager Don Wakamatsu and second baseman Chone Figgins engage in fisticuffs after the latter appears to stop trying.Three-Eighths Full: The encounter is dramatized, choreographed, and set to music — a la Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video*.

Mostly Empty:Brandon Morrow turns out to be pretty awesome, actually, posting season numbers comparable to Tim Lincecum‘s.Three-Eighths Full: Most of his (i.e. Morrow’s) starts are over by 6:00pm PT, when Seattle fans are just coming home from work.

Mostly Empty:Rob Johnson plays 61 games, compiles 209 PAs, generally bites.Three-Eighths Full: Team determines, once and for all, that Rob Johnson is not major league catcher. (Note: This isn’t all that satisfying. Sorry.)

Mostly Empty: Team gets absolutely no offense from first base, where hitters combine to slash .222/.288/.358.Three-Eighths Full: Team acquires Russell Branyan mid-season-ish. Though the signing does little for Seattle’s playoff hope, Branyan becomes first person ever to hit baseball into space.

I’ll be on with the ESPN Radio crew at 11:30 am today, presumably talking about Felix’s chances for the Cy Young award and other stuff.

Oh, and if you haven’t heard yet, Stephen Strasburg needs Tommy John surgery and is out until 2012. This is why we say Happy Felix Day. Every time he takes the mound, we should be thankful that we get to watch him pitch.